COVID-19: What Your Church Can Do Now

Guidelines from the Presbyterian Disaster Assistance Team

To Leaders in the Presbytery of the Pacific: Presbyterian Disaster Assistance just released new guidelines for churches again for COVID-19, as it begins to take off in the United States. We are still learning about this virus but we know it spreads rapidly. Our Disaster Response Team met this morning to share updates and give good guidanceto all of you, our beloved churches. We hope this helps. Below are resources and our very best guidance to you at this time. 1. VERY IMPORTANT: We would like every church to identify a primarycontact with whom we can communicate. Please email Rev. Dave Worth , Email Dave, Disaster Response Team Chair,with your church’s primary contact so that we can begin to build a database of response. 2. It is critically important that you identify a leadership team from your church to lead. Work with your session, or a task force combined of session, deacons, preschool, janitorial, mission team. Your first task as a team is to identify your most vulnerable members. Your next task is to find one way of communicating to all of your members at once, such as email database, cell phone numbers, or phone tree. 3. Please review the new PDA guidelines for churches that are much more specific than earlier this week. They are extremely helpful! CLICK HERE TO VIEW. This resource is available in English, Korean & Spanish. 4. In addition to PDA’s guidelines, we add the following tips:  We recommend that you do not pass offering plates (can put them outside the sanctuary) and do not have bulletins if you have screens. Set up how to have Session and Deacons meetings remotely: Major conferencing providers like Cisco (Webex) are offering free use of their products for a time to enable orgs to work remotely: https://help.webex.com/en-us/n80v1rcb/Cisco-Webex-Available-Free-in-These-Countries-COVID-19-Response. LA County’s guidance for faith based organizations. This is a really good website to check on local outbreak, also information in Korean and Spanish: http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/GuidanceFaithBasedOrgsEnglish.pdf Here is the link to a Presbyterian church in Washington state that has closed down its campus after discovering a church member who attended worship was infected: http://spconline.org/. We thought this might be helpful to see how they are moving forward. Hand sanitizer can be hard to find right now! Here is a company Westwood Pres. is using: Prosource 562-758-4602. Please note that our best information is that handwashing for 20-30 seconds is more effective than sanitizer. Prefilled communion sets are the best way to serve communion right now to prevent spreading the virus: http://www.celebratecommunion.com/prefilled-communion-cups-with-wafers-free-sample-box.html Above all, we entrust our lives to our loving God who goes with us in all things. We call for the church to go deeper in prayer for our communities and one another during this time. Find ways to love anyway. Grace and Peace to all of you! Rev. Heidi Worthen Gamble, Mission CatalystRev. Dave Worth, Chair, Disaster Response Team, Pacific Presbytery